2004 has been yet another interesting year for Internet revenue streams. I thought it might be interesting to see what members have seen in their own revenue situations so far this year. You don't have to put any specific numbers....general trends will do.

My revenue from the first half of this year is much higher than what I had in the first 6 months of 2003, but it is only marginally higher than the last 6 months of 2003. Part of this is likely seasonal as affiliate programs seem to have their best performance during the Christmas season.

CPC programs
The only CPC program I run is Google's Adsense. So far, I would say that the revenues have been pretty steady this year. (This last month had a drop but I am waiting to see if it picks up again).

CPM and popunder
I had given up on these, actually I never really applied to a CPM program until earlier this year. I have seen this revenue stream steadily grow as traffic on a couple of my sites has contined to increase. This has been the pleasant surprise of the first half of 2004.

CPA/Affiliate programs
Affiliate programs have been very inconsistent for me. Things started off really good with Jan & Feb looking like blockbuster months. But reversals and a general slowdown during the spring and early summer have taken my monthly average to what I had last year, even though I have more sites online. The experiment with Amazon AWS sites hasn't really generated a lot of reveue either, though these are low maintenance sites and should still have a positive ROI. Affiliate programs have generally a disappointment.

Selling my own ads
This is one aspect I never found time to do. I know that many webmasters earn a good portion of their revenues selling their own ads. But a combination of lack of time and not wanting it to look like selling PR has kept me out of this stream. Maybe something to consider for the next 6 months.

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Interesting points Div, you are probably going to find that the longer we go on the less likey the popunder is going to survive, but I can see why it is easier revenue for now.

I desperately wanted to find a decent affilliate program when I my website was actually active (I haven't had time nor computer as of late), but I got royally screwed and was put off. Plus the amount of amazon affilliate sites I come across makes me completely ignore them nowadays, If anything really fresh comes out, then let me know.

As for the selling of ads I think that main sponsors are the key here and for me they must be relevant even to the extent of competing and there must be only a few of them. You'll find if you offer low prices at first as a taster and they receive good revenue and then offer a more rewarding (not greedy price) after 3 months you'll probably have a good revenue out of 3 or 4 websites.

Enough for now, I have to go to Jury duty woohoo.

Rob

Sorry Div, I read this thread as soon as you started it but I had no data at the time to share with you. I still don't just because I don't usually track this very much... but I think I can add my 2 cents to the thread...

CPC programs
Besides, Google's AdSense, I also run a few others like Quigo's AdSonar and BIDClix.com. Then I have the PPC providers like FindWhat.com, SearchFeed.com, Kanoodle.com and RevenuePilot.com allowing me to produce my own brand of CPC ad units/creatives. Soon I will add a couple more to this list (maybe LookSmart.com, Chitika.com and SpiralAds.com) but the list is definitely growing... The ultimate is to get a deal with Overture.com of course - but I will wait a while before I cntact them. Overall, Google's AdSense beats them all hands down but FindWhat seems to be a close second, if only I can find the time to expand it's use on these forum pages.

CPM and popunder
I have never used pop-unders except for that time when I was trying to create interest for GIDForums when it was still at www.desilva.biz/forum/ but otherwise I don't know how it would have performed for me. The last time I ran a CPM campaign was when I was still with BurstMedia. Let's just say I make in one day (AdSense) what I made with BurstMedia in 6 months (2003)! So as soon as AdSense came around last year, I quickly said my "Thank You"s, asked them to keep my money and close my account

CPA/Affiliate programs
I did OK with affiliate programs when I first started out with them, but when AdSense & friends came into the scene it was just simply not worth the effort to continue with campaigns like these, at least for me and my websites. I may re-consider adding them to some sites in the future but for now, they're useless.

Selling my own ads
This is something that I get into occasionally but I don't actively pursue new advertisers. I prefer if they approach me instead of it being the other way around. The really nice thing about this is that I offer them a FIXED monthly rate and that at such a affordable rate that usually the advertisers don't drop their campaigns unless they go out of business. The trick here is to cultivate long-term deals instead of the "get-rich-overnight" scheme. If I continue this way, in time this will translate into stable and fixed revenue source for my sites and can help weather uncertainties in the future with the other ad models.

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J de Silva
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I've been hearing this about popups for 3 or 4 years now and they are still around. My Google toolbar used to block just about everything 6 months ago, but now Fastclick pops go right through. I don't think this will change as long as pops provide good ROI to advertisers.

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Google Adsense beats all, hands down for *some* revenue, if your site has any traffic at all. One of my best friends has a tech site he's had up for 5 years, and has just started getting 190,000 unique visitors per month.. unreal since he doesn't have much changing on his site. Anyway, he's usually getting around $1500 per month from Google ads. Nice eh?